How an Essex traveler became a Balinese medicine man – BBC News

From a windy coastal town in England to the mountains of Indonesia: how did an Essex woman swap her 9-5 for the life of a Balinese jungle doctor?

When Lynette Allen wants to jump into a Zoom call, it’s not as simple as throwing on a work-appropriate top and some pajama bottoms.

The wifi where he lives – in a remote jungle at the foot of a Balinese mountain – isn’t the greatest, so he travels two hours south to the nearest city to get a stronger connection and “flat white excuses”. .

Her wooden house, which she shares with husband Mark, 55, and daughter Livvie, 11, is a 6m x 6m (20ft x 20ft) house on a banana plantation.

When the family arrived on the island, they kept moving “from nice villa with a pool to nice villa with a pool” before deciding to settle down, buy land and build their own house.

It’s certainly different to Lynette’s life 10 years ago, when she commuted from her home in Dovercourt to her corporate job in Harwich to help with business.

Then everything changed. She got divorced, met her new husband Mark, had a baby and decided to change her whole life.

The family initially moved to Spain, where “I learned all the things I do now,” recalls Lynette, 50.

“From there, they called me to Bali. I said to Mark, ‘Can we go live in Bali for a while?’ and he said ‘Yes.’ So we did the same thing again.”

Today, she specializes in plant medicine using cacao, runs “sister circles” – where women come together to share, connect and celebrate life – online and teaches others “about ritual and meditation and journaling”.

He speaks “quite a bit of Indonesian” these days. “I get my point. I could communicate with hand signals to fill in the blanks,” he laughed.

Daughter Livvie is homeschooled – something Lynette feels passionately about – while Mark is retired.

But Bali is far from idyllic for all locals, something Lynette realized within months of her big move.

A mutual friend introduced a woman named Kim Farr, who took Lynette to visit a safe house run by Bali Street Mums, which provides shelter, food, health and education to women and children in the Denpasar area.

Lynette was “shocked” by what she saw. “I went into this safe house where they had about 75 kids. Probably about 25 mothers… They’ve all been abused, they’ve all been rescued,” she says.

“Livvie was seven or eight at the time. My head was pounding because I was thinking, ‘There, for the grace of God,’ so to speak.”

But the more time Lynette spent with the families, the more terrified she became. Some children were living in “absolute misery” on top of a dump.

“They live in tin shacks at the bottom of the dump, they’re barefoot on top of it, and they’re looking for plastic and things they can sell,” Lynette recalls.

“What I saw was eye-opening.”

Lynette couldn’t stop thinking about the children’s lives and their lack of safe housing, clean beds or a way to cool off in the oppressive humidity of Bali.

“I have to do something. I don’t know what to do…but then I started figuring out how to work with them and I’ve been working with them for four years now,” says Lynette.

The charity tries to provide clothes, books, food to families in need, to ensure that their children are sent to school instead of down on the city streets.

“Children from the mountains tend to be from the poorest areas, their parents are used to begging on the streets when they are young,” says Lynette.

“They think it’s okay to send their children to the city to beg. But that leaves them very open to vulnerability.

“So what Kim does is try to reach out to families and look at how we can keep the child at home instead of doing what the parents had to do as a child.”

Lynette is also an author, with proceeds from her books going to Bali Street Mums.

“My latest book is about paying local teenage girls a weekend, and while they’re there they ask ‘What kind of life would you like to have?’ they will talk about

“They will talk about their sexual health and contraception, not getting married too early, going to school.”

Her new book brings together 50 women over 50 to write a chapter each with “the most heartfelt advice we’ve learned in our fifty years.”

“And it’s a book full of advice from women from all backgrounds. We have a lawyer, a nun, teachers, grandmothers, entrepreneurs.

“We’ve raised nearly £5,000 for Bali Street Mums from that book alone since August.”

Not many people go into such a big life change as Lynette, so does she regret going to Bali?

“No, I don’t,” she says. “I would like to be closer to my family. My mother is in Essex, in Dovercourt. My brother is in Cambridge.

“But [I] measure everything, where we are, the education we have had for Livvie, the books I am able to write for charity.

“And you can pay to help the Balinese community – £1, £2 or £5 goes a long way.”

Lynette says she will always appreciate listening to her intuition and finding a different way of life.

“I thought, ‘Hold on, let’s start from scratch – what do I really want to do?'” she says.

“I hope my daughter will grow up with more sense because she’s seen us move through our lives and move around the world.”